Letters to a Girl: Paternal Sexual Abuse

Dear hurting girl,

When I first contemplated writing to you, I wanted to tell you things will be alright. I wanted to tell you it will be okay. 
Don’t get me wrong, those things are indeed true.

But they are only half-truth. 

Now, your interpretation of ‘alright’ needs to be taken into consideration, but for me – it used to mean that one day I’ll forget all this and I’ll feel just like a normal girl, however that feels. Won’t that be great! I thought to myself.

What I didn’t know when I was in your shoes is that my idea of ‘alright’ was completely unrealistic.  You will never forget all this.  There is no forgetting.  Once it comes out, it is there and is as real as a piece of furniture.

Being abused leaves you with a mark.  Not one that you or anyone else can really physically see, but it is a mark you know that you have. You can show it to someone, and they may always see that mark when they see you. Chances are, they won’t.

That mark, it is something you’ve marked yourself with in your mind.  Some people who don’t really know you very well might see that mark.  They might think of you as the ‘abused’ girl.  But they don’t really know you. I want to tell you now to let go of that – there are people who really don’t know you who will never ever ‘get’ you.  Let go of that right now – they will never understand you. Eventually in life you will be misunderstood. Life is not about getting everyone to understand you.  That thought will make you mad.  ‘Mad hatter’ mad, not ‘busted ipod’ mad.  Accept this now: You will be misunderstood. This may seem frustrating at times, or maybe even convenient at times, but it is a good thing, at least for me, though it has taken years to see that. I’ll tell you more about the good part, but first I want to tell you about the truth.

I felt like people expected me to tell you that it would all be okay. Half-truth.  You will never ever ever look at yourself the same again.

The truth is you’ll probably hate yourself for a long time, and you won’t know why.  Somewhere inside your brain is trying to fit together pieces of a puzzle and it makes a lot of assumptions, generally all wrong.
Somewhere inside you are blaming yourself. Somewhere inside you might think this happened to you because you are ugly, or messed up, or somehow you asked for it to happen, maybe you will think you even caused it. None of this is true.  Your brain can (and will) come up with a hundred reasons why this happened to you, working itself into a logistical frenzy, but know this without a doubt: this can not be reasoned out.  Your father is a psychopath child molester. That means you throw out logic and reason.  Logic and reasoning will get you nowhere if you are trying to make sense of why this happened.  It happened because he is a sicko.  Not you. Him.  He is a sicko who twisted everything around in your brain to make you believe that you are also a sicko!  But you aren’t. 

The truth is you may think that feeling beautiful is bad. You may think that feeling all those feelings about your sexuality is a sign that you are a sicko.  This is wrong.  Your brain is back to using its logic and reasoning, and as I have told you, when referring to this sick situation, those tools are useless.  My best advice to you in moving forward with yourself in this regard is removing the association between the sick sexual abuse that happened to you and the sexual development and feelings that will happen to you. That is a bad association that, though you may not know it now, will wreak more havoc for you than any other thought process.  It isn’t at all easy, but when you associate those two things (guilt and sex) you are sliding down a slippery slope that lands you into a pit of self-hatred. You might think you hate yourself now, go down that road and you’ll think today’s self hatred is a walk in the park.

The truth is you may never be able to look at grown men the same way. You will always be wondering in the back of your mind if they are a sicko. You may take to hating them right off to protect yourself (back to the logistic/reasoning that is useless in this situation) but this is not good.  There are good men. This may seem like a jacked up sentence but it is true, in fact it is a terrible understatement. People like us, we don’t know what good men are.  That’s like envisioning a stegacorn.  Yes. A stegacorn. Stegasaurus and a unicorn have a kid (or is it a foal? Cub? Kitten?).  I just made that up.

It took me many many many long  years to learn that there are men capable of a love we could not imagine in our little messed up minds. There are men who would never ever hurt a child, in fact would prefer to inflict physical pain on anyone who tried. There are gentle and loving, fiercely protective men. There are men who will see us in a light we could never see ourselves, who believe in us when we can’t. Who never see that mark that we see on ourselves.  Who would lay down their lives to protect us from harm.  Sounds like a riding off on your stegacorn into the sunset kind of a fairy tale, but it is true and it takes a long time to find that truth.

The truth is, you may even try to blame other people around you. Like your mother.  You may think it is her fault. This goes back to the logistical reasoning that is completely useless. The truth is that she has been right there in that pool of self hatred with you, though you can’t see each other. Its dark in there.

The truth is you will always wonder if that sicko really cared for you or not.  Somewhere deep down inside your mind is trying to find a father’s love somewhere in this mess.
That is another slippery slope.  He is incapable of love. Incapable.  The only thing that even can be construed as some twisted form of love is his own obsession with himself and seeking out what sick things make him happy. He’s a sicko. He’s incapable of love.  The truth is your father never loved you – he doesn’t know what love is.  That sounds terrible, but it is true, and accepting it is the only way to move forward.

The truth is that part of your childhood was lost.  It is gone forever. You will never get it back.  Never ever never.  It’s a loss you will always feel, though it will be faint,almost invisible at times.

The truth is you will think you’ve ‘gotten over it’ a thousand times and you will also think that you are just as messed up as you ever were a thousand times. 

The truth is even when you are 32 you will still struggle sometimes and you’ll still see that mark on yourself, sometimes. But – at some point you will realize this truth.  Somewhere along the line you stop struggling with the abuse.  Somewhere along the line the struggle comes to be with YOUR OWN SELF.

There is a mountain we all must climb and it is within.  See, while other people are going about their lives growing up and seeing where they fit in the world, people like you and me are trying to recover from the terrible things done to us. By the time we come to terms with the abuse, that mountain of self has been getting taller and taller and more precarious.  We have farther to climb than other people do.  Other people have no idea of the treacherous mountainside that we have.  Kilimanjaro has nothing on us. To make matters worse all of our climbing gear is all rusty and trashed. 

There is a silver lining, though.  There is a little God-gift. 

The truth is that mountain top, it is beautiful. As you are climbing it, you will be able to see the beauty.

We have a unique perspective. Now, those other people I talked about, the ones who won’t understand you, it is because they can’t see your mountain. Even people who can’t see the mark on you can’t see that mountain.  Sometimes you won’t be able to see it either, but you’ll know it is there, because you have been climbing it! People close to you who love you, they see that mountain.  These are the ones who will cheer us on, who will tell us that we are wonderful when we can’t see it.  It’s hard climbing mountains.  But we see things others can’t.  We see the soaring height of happiness, we understand and sympathize with the pit of despair, and we understand others, those with marks and scars, in ways that no one else could. We see both light and darkness that others are blind to.  We know and feel the depth of love, and the lack of it. When we get to that mountain top, we are capable of guiding others up their own mountains.  We can help others through the pitfalls that we are all too familiar with.
It is a gift. A God-gift. We are made stronger, though for a long long time we will only think ourselves weak.

Speaking of pitfalls. Once you reach the mountain top, you don’t always stay there. Sometimes you fall down just a little bit and you find yourself having to climb back up.  It will happen again and again and again. Life’s like a jumprope. Now, this is true for everyone, but remember, our mountain is taller and steeper.  It will be hard for us.

The truth is, life will go on. And it is totally worth it!  Life is full of love, art, music, expression, great people and opportunities beyond our imagination. If we don’t see it, then we are standing in our own way! Life is wonderful, truly, and though we may think ourselves broken, we are not. We are just as capable as anyone of living a wonderful happy life, and a happiness we will never take for granted. 

With Love,
A Marked Mountain Climber 

Karine Polwart

I discovered Scottish musician Karine Polwart last year thanks to Pandora and immediately downloaded her album. Now she is out with some new stuff. Her lyrics are decadent and it is so easy to escape into the stories she tells so eloquently, and perfectly paired with flawless guitar picking to boot.

She's up there on my virtual shelf alongside Kate Rusby. Great company!
If you are a Celtic/Folk fan (like me) go check her out. You won't be disappointed.

Health Wednesdays: Macro Greens

Still learning to blog regularly here. I am thinking if I can come up with a general plan for certain days I will be more likely to post something useful.  Also, as a chronic mental drifter - a little order is quite helpful.

So, my new theme for Wednesdays is health.
I will share with you what's going on with my own health journey, what has been helpful, my thoughts on nutrition. My story in a few sentences (some day I'll dive into it a bit more). I have suffered over the years from a variety of inflammatory related issues, which has caused pain in my legs and hips, my reproductive organs, and caused me to have migraines as well. I have found that food and stress are major contributors to this and have had several years of trying to figure out the body I've been given. I've read book after book and I feel like they all add up to the same things! I usually sum it up to people who are just beginning their journey into health through nutrition by telling them to read Michael Pollan's Food Rules. Here is the basic list, but to learn more I would advise picking up his book (here). It's cheap and east to read.*

I'll also be giving a product review of what I've been trying lately, since I get a bit of a special glance into upcoming natural food products.

I have been working through some issues in my body.  I am so fortunate that my body is so communicative with me. That's a nice way of saying that my symptoms often send me into a fury of self-diagnosis, which generally leads me down the same path of healing through food, or fasting.

Nutritionally, we are eating vegetarian around here. With the issues I have been working on with my body, I am mostly vegan.  I have been doing some fasting though, which seems to be absolutely miraculous. More on that another time.
I am about to begin some experimentation with beets and beet juice after completing the water fast I am working through. I'll update you on how that goes.

The product that I want to rave about this week is Macro Greens from Macro Life Naturals I have been using it for over a year now.

I went out seeking this product after reading the book The Ph Miracle. Also a good read that I recommend.*
This product is everything it says it is. It is full of goodness and it all comes from a good source. The flavor is a world away from other powdered green products. I scoop it into my smoothies in the morning, or sometimes into apple cider, when the cider is in plentiful (and cheaper) in the stores.
Also, other green powders my kids WILL notice in their smoothies. Not so for Macro Greens, unless of course I put a whole bunch.
You aren't just getting greens, though, and that is why I chose this product in the first place. The great flavor was just an added bonus. You have your spirulina and chlorella of course, but you are also getting non-dairy probiotic cultures, five different types. It is also packed with antioxidants, including milk thistle and ginkgo. Add to that eleven adaptogenic and metabolic herbs, including eleuthero and astragulus.
Macro greens goes above and beyond, though, when they throw in the natural plant enzymes protease, cellulase, amylase and lipase. These enzymes help assist our body in digestion. Enzymes are lacking in much of our food, as they are killed through cooking and processing, and yet they are vital to our absorption process.
Added sugar? No.  Why muck it up? Its a great supplement from whole foods in a base of certified organic barley grass, the least allergenic of all grasses.

To sum it up, this product provides the max nutrition with minimal upset to our system. In other words, its made to speak softly and carry a big stick.
They are carrying more products now which I have not yet tried. I hope to try them out soon.

Until next week, take care of yourself.

* No one book is ever going to give you all the answers. In my experience, each great book offers you a handful of tools. Some of the tools are all the same, some slightly different, but not all of us need the same tools. Read a few good books and you'll see recurring themes. Eat well. Take care of yourself. Be calm. The approach may be slightly different, but there are strings drawing them together and the goal is always the same. Better health.<3
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I do not generally squeal.

Unless:
It is 7am, I am naked in the shower desperately trying to kill a giant (flying) American Cockroach with my shoe.

Forget the chupacabra. One of these so-called 'water bugs' can send me into a frenzy, and I like bugs, as a rule. I will rescue them and set them outside. But not these.

They are fast. And did I mention they can fly??
All the more offensive when you are naked and vulnerable.

And they are huge.  And they don't die when you squish them.
And when you do squish them they make a terribly crunching sound and are messy.

Apparently they can climb up through pipes and in spaces around toilets.  I am making it a mission to find the entry points for these suckers and eliminate them as much as possible. My mornings just can't start this way.

Now that you need a shower, be careful to glance around before you step in there naked.

Spring Break

This spring break I have taken the break part seriously.
I am focusing on reducing stress in my life.  I do a lot of things without forethought, just spontaneously, which wreck my schedule and causes my day to spin out of control. Before you know it I've accomplished less than a quarter of what needs doing, then I'm pinning it onto the next day which is always burdened.
I also put a lot of planning into events at times, thus setting myself up with a lot of expectations that go unmet, or else the event planning causes me to slowly coil up into a curly-cue with my stress and I am left with a migraine and just wanting to go home and chill.

 On a conscious level I am breaking off from habits or behaviors that ultimately do not contribute to my quality of life.  There are things that eat away at my intentions, that swallow up my time and leave me far too stressed.
Facebook is one.  Of course I like Facebook and appreciate the ability it gives me to keep up with people. However, it eats away at my time. I really do not have an extra half hour in the day to devote to a scad of status updates. Then, scanning through, you aren't just getting the things you really want to read. You're getting what interests other people. Some you may agree with. Some you may not. Some you wish you didn't read.  Some leave you frustrated.
Either way, Facebook is a time thief. I figure those who want to keep up with me will do just that, and Facebook isn't required.

I am also looking at the things I have let slip out of my life temporarily.  Things that contributed to my wholeness.  Cooking. Gardening. Reading. These are all things that I would have more time for if I weren't so busy otherwise.

I am cutting our activities down to just a couple of times a week and focusing more on our home, which has, with all this stress and business, been somewhat neglected.

So I am centering myself.  Doing spring cleaning within myself and within my life.
Thus far, it has been quite relieving and productive.  Invoking the peace in my life has been healing in so many ways.

Here's to spring break! Hope you are enjoying yours.

Pip

Reading makes time on the treadmill or stationary bike less of a bore and so - that is what I do. Over the past year or so I have been rediscovering classic books that I have not read since high school or college. Lately it has been Great Expectations (Dickens).

I was caught by a portion of Pip's narrative. After being spurned by Estella he is brought to tears, and this is his recollection of the nature he had adopted in his childhood.

"My sister's bringing up had made me sensitive. In the little world in which children have their existence, whosoever brings them up, I am convinced there is nothing so finely perceived and so finely felt as injustice. It may be only a small injustice that the child can be exposed to; but the child is small, and its world is small, and its rocking-horse stands as many hands high, according to scale as a big-boned Irish hunter. Within myself I had sustained from my babyhood a perpetual conflict with injustice. I had known from the time when I could speak that my sister, in her capricious and violent coercion, was unjust to me. I had cherished a profound conviction that her bringing me up by hand gave her  no right to bring me up by jerks. Through all my punishments, disgraces, fasts, and vigils, and other penitential performances, I had nursed this assurance; and to my communing so much with it, in a solitary and unprotected way, I, in great part, refer the fact that I was morally timid and very sensitive."


I had to read this a few times, as it was so familiar, what he is describing.  Somewhat of a roadmap, I am sure, of my own childhood nature. I recall my mother saying I was very sensitive, and my brother, of course.  I suppose it is no wonder, then. As Dickens infers, children are highly sensitive to injustice, and when one's childhood is full of it, there is no doubt that the outcome is an adult that is also highly sensitive.

Some of us are more sensitive than others, and are made to feel things much more deeply than others. That is easy to see in our house, where one sister is quiet, gentle and sensitive while the other is boisterous, self-assertive and persistent. No doubt my sensitive child will feel injustice. Hopefully, my boisterous child will learn to be aware of it as well.

No doubt, Dickens was a sensitive child, and as an adult he was very aware of injustices in the society he was part of.  No doubt that writers are often sensitive people as well, I know all of my favorites are. Perhaps it is a  gift.
I'll have to come back to that. : )

Good night, all.

Sturdy: Examining my yearning for property.

             My favorite spoon is a bit heavier in the hand than the others.  Its sturdiness is what I am attracted to.  I feel as though I could stir anything with it, even as I use it to delicately coax the leaves to move about in my teabag.   It is more dependable than the others and I am delighted when I reach into the drawer for a spoon and it happens to be that particular one – that simple Oneida Baguette.

            I’ve often referred to myself as sturdy and wonder if, perhaps, my affection for such a simple and solid spoon is a reflection of my own perception of self.  I’m no large woman, by any means, but I’ve felt an association with big bones and my body density certainly isn’t average.  I’m more solid as one might think, and it is clear when you look upon my offspring that we are a sturdy lot, theirs even more pronounced due to the sturdiness also contributed by their father.  He is stronger than most men of his size and he is not a small man.

            Submersed in conversation with a homeschooling acquaintance the other day, we came across the subject of housing. Not unusual for me, with my sordid accounts of dishonest landlords and my wearisome pining for a home to call our own.  She was German, this acquaintance, to which I much admired, having grown up there as a kid and feeling a bit as one must feel towards a kind foster family. It was a heath upon which part of my childhood was wrought and I, for a time, called it home and loved it as if it were truly mine.  Living in Europe this woman was accustomed to living in flats and found apartment living to be very comfortable and customary for her.  Having admired condos in LoDo, an upscale trendy part of downtown Denver, I agreed that apartment living must surely have its perks.  Living in an urban area, from my opinion, was surely one of its highlights, along with the freedom to up and leave at the end of your lease if the north wind took you somewhere riveting like Vancouver. In my mind I pictured myself tending a variety of potted plants on my little balcony, a little yellow water pitcher in hand adorned with the usual cliché of daisies.  I pictured my children peering over the railing, toes lined up on the little ledge of concrete that we called our own.  Our property would end there, though, and of course the rough slab was not ours by any means.

            Surely, this iconic apartment visual seemed tempting, as I currently live in a larger house with its suburban yard covered in grasses doomed to remain three inches tall and loose hedges that never look quite right, despite my attempts at grooming them.  I ponder on it, in square agreement with her.  From her standpoint, she could not completely understand the drive for one to own their home.  Intuitive as I am, I could glance from her direction and understand what she had meant, I saw her thought processes and, for a moment, they were mine.

            But later, as I stand in my kitchen holding my favorite spoon, my thoughts drift towards that conversation and my mind begins to wholly examine it.  How did this separation of belief form? She is from Europe and embraces apartment living, while I am from the United States and pine for a home that we can call ‘ours’.  Then it occurs to me and in my mind I review the past two hundred and fifty years of my ancestry, when this distinction branched away.

            A couple of hundred years ago many pivotal events began to shape my ‘sturdiness’.  My Swedish ancestors left that town where their lineage had been recorded for over a thousand years.  They took their skills, boarded a ship and set off towards an uncertain future.  It wasn’t religion that forced them to rally their courage and pack their things, it was opportunity.  There was a new world and it lay ahead of them, full of promise and a future worth the loss of everything, putting all of their hopes on the timber and canvas that would take them across the sea to a land they had only heard spoken of.

            My German ancestors disembarked onto American soil already in debt.  They were indentured servants and they would pay ten years labor for the chance they had been given to make a life for themselves here in this New World.  Scarcely would they complete their years of service before taking up arms and joining in a revolution to fight for this land that that had become their home.

            My Scottish ancestors, those who had survived the Jacobite rebellion and the subsequent thrashings, fled their country in search of a land where they would be free to use their family names without retribution and where they could own land.  These Scots were not soldiers or urbanites. They would be free to be farmers, not crofters as they had always been, toiling on a land that was never really theirs. 

            A hundred years later my Irish ancestors left a barren landscape where families were starving to death.  There was nothing to eat and no way to make money. They were destitute and desperate, and they were not coming to a land that was a blank slate, they were coming to a land that in many places was not welcoming.  The poor, hungry Irish came in droves and were turned away only to grow more hungry and poor, at least those that lacked certain – sturdiness.

            These people and their offspring spread across a still-forming map like wildfire.  They set off into territories teeming with opportunity and danger.  They sought land, along the way stopping where they could to try their hand, many staying and others continuing on, out to the west, to pioneer their way to a scrap of wide open prairie. 

            They invested in railroads, sold everything they had and gathered themselves up in covered wagons with crude maps, beat down the earth in runs for land and tore through the hills in search of gold. They plowed dirt never before farmed and they wrought homes from what the earth gave.  Women bore children in lone cabins to the sound of Indian drums, men scoured the countryside carving out fertile hunting grounds.  They had to be sturdy.  Those who weren’t able to make their living on the Frontier turned around and headed back to New England cities, finding their own niche there somewhere in the building of American industry and business.

            I come from sturdy stock.  Every familial line that has led up to me were survivors, those who pressed the ragged edges of the map in search of land, of opportunity, of a rich life where their children could roam across ground that they called their own. 
            I dip my favorite spoon into the honey that my husband harvested from our beehive in our little suburban backyard and watch its gold gleam sink into my tea.  I understand, now, that I can’t fight it.  When you combine all of the ancestral trails that have led to this moment, me and my favorite spoon, there are thousands of years of hardheadedness and willpower.  A hunger for something tangible, the dirt at your feet, solid earth to harness, to provide for you.  This is why part of the so-called American dream includes owning a house.  It is in our very blood.    

Our Fall 2011 Homeschool Session Begins

Out with the lazy daze of summer and in with the organized determination of fall.

We rose early this morning to the first official day of classes in our house.

Here are our learning activities for today:

Math from the Center for Innovative Math Teachings.  We love this program.  Just reviewing last year a bit for now to sharpen their mental math skills.

Spelling Soup. The word for the day is Chemistry.

Assigned Reading: Alecia is plowing through The Borrowers and Zana is reading through The Best Book of Nature Stories, a Doubleday book from 1957.

To encourage having fun with math (a struggle in this household) we have been using the Cyberchase lesson plans along with a Cyberchase Episode. Today is Monkey Map.

We rotate our Science and History.  Today is Science day. This session we are doing Intro to Chemistry, so to get us started we are watching Chemistry: A Volatile History

I'll be updating eventually to post a review to our Chemistry documentary.
We're looking forward to a fresh new year!

Chapter 10

A clip from Brundelwain.  

Chapter 10,  Gaelochaven.

© 2011, Eleanor Raif

When the chicken had met its end and lay neatly plucked on the counter and the other foul were seen to, Aldyn carefully washed his hands and motioned for Alana to follow him. He picked up a glowing stick from the fireplace and they left the warmth of the dining area and entered the cold and unused sitting room again where Colin and Marcas were stacking up more firewood.  Aldyn picked up a few small pieces of kindling and Alana followed his broad shoulders through the door that led into the north wing of the house.

          It was cold and dark until he lit a candle on a table in the corner.  He set to work lighting the fire in the hearth, the smoke coiling up into the chimney that howled with the winter wind.

          Alana looked around at the home he had shared with his wife. She had wondered if it had remained completely unchanged. A few pots sat on a shelf, one held dried heather flowers long left to the spiders, one a collection of pussy willow branches in a similar state.  A little wooden box was displayed on a corner shelf next to a silver coil of metal which appeared to be a bracelet of sorts. There was evidence of a woman and it must have been Marion.

          “I’m sorry about the dust and cobwebs.” Aldyn muttered as he bent over the hearth. “Hopefully it will be suitable enough for you.”

          “’Tis fine.” Alana answered softly. “Ye aren’t here too often to care for it.”

          “Aye, well.  That’s not the problem, I suppose.  Blaire, she…she has offered to clean it up for me but I…I haven’t wanted her to for so long.  Things are…things are just as they were left.”  Aldyn was different now, something happened to him, stepping into this place so full of ghosts.

          Alana lit another candle she found and pushed open the door into the bedroom casting a glance back at him.  He looked up at her, then nodded, giving her permission to tread there.

          She stepped into the large bedroom and gazed in wonder at the intricate wooden bed before her.  At the head and foot were two beautiful swans, necks bowed gracefully to each other, wings raised as if they were taking flight.  She had never seen a more beautiful piece of furniture.  She ran her fingers down the neck of the one nearest her and felt the smoothness of it, it was impeccably well made.  The linens were clean it seemed, and the bed had been slept in recently. It must have been where he slept when he visited.  She turned to find a large wardrobe beautifully made as well. She opened the door and the scent of mint twigs and lavender poured out of it.  Marion’s clothes were still there, neatly placed.  She closed the door gently, with reverence, and set the candle down on the hearth.

          “Aldyn?”

          “What is it?” he asked, still arguing with the fireplace.

          “Did ye want to light this fire too?”

          “We’ll see if I can get this one going strong. May not need the both of them.”

          She peeked out of the shutters and saw that the snow had begun to blow.  The trees bent to the wind and flecks of white were dancing about wildly.  She shut them again, shivering.

          She returned to Aldyn and knelt next to him.  He glanced back at her and she giggled.

          “What?” he smiled.

          “Ye’ve got a smudge on your nose.” She smiled.

          “Oh,” he replied, rubbing it. “Is it there now?”

          “Aye, it is.” She smiled, then reached out a finger and rubbed it herself. “There now, that’s better anyway.”

          He sat back and drew his knees up. “I think I’ve got it started.”

          “Looks that way.” She gazed into the fire that crackled before them, eating up all of the kindling and showering the logs beneath with burning embers.

          “Thank ye for coming in here with me.  I have a hard time facing this place alone.  I thought if ye came I’d feel less…haunted.”

          She took his hand. “Of course, Aldyn.  Perhaps I could help ye tidy it?”

          “Perhaps.” He answered her quietly. 

          “The furnishings are beautiful. Wherever did ye get them?”

          “I bought them from a Norwegian nobleman.  I had seen a bed like it on my travels and I had hoped that I would find another.  Sure enough, the week before we were to be wed I met this man who was selling some things.  He had brought it here for his wife, she was a Scot. She did’na much like it.  I also bought the wardrobe from him.  They were a surprise for Marion on our wedding day. She loved them.”

          “I can see why. They are magnificent.  Ye were good to her.”

          He nodded. “Aye.”

          “She was fortunate, Aldyn, to have you.  Her life was short, and to…to be loved by someone like you, ye must have made her life something wonderful.”

          “I suppose I have never thought of it that way.”

          “Think how many people have lived and died without knowing a love like that.”

          Aldyn’s eyes met hers again. “And some of us may even be lucky enough to know it twice in a lifetime.”

Brundelwain Editing

I have had so much fun editing my book lately.  My mind has been changed about it, at least the way I feel about sharing it.  It was so personal before, and it still is, but now I guess the change has been within. Being okay with those things that are personal to me, and sharing them.  Unafraid of judgement because I know that it will still be mine and personal afterward.  I began writing this book when I was still in my twenties, I guess it has been nearly four years ago. It has been on and off the shelf for me. I've put it away at times. Changed it.  Destroyed pieces of it. Reassembled it. Now I am just ready to move on and look forward to writing more stories.  I've more stories than this one in me, this one is just very special to me. I am sure every author feels that way about their first big piece, and I am no different.

I am working with Authonomy.com right now. It has been a big help to me to have others read my work and review it. Authors and history buffs, readers and critics.  All reviews have been pretty good, though I would like to see more as the story progresses.

Its my next book that has pushed me to get this one out there. I think after a run on authonomy for awhile I will move on with self-publishing. It is so easy to get your stuff out there nowadays, in the world of one click publishing.  I am inspired by others while at the same time, I really just want to write.  Sharing that story with others is just an added bonus.  Unlike my other forms of expression, this is one I feel that I truly ought to share.  My art has been a tool for recovery, my music a tool for self-soothing. Writing - it has been a tool for expression. There have been times in my life that it was a release, that it was merely meant to put feelings into a collection of words. Now, it is to unravel a story that took its shape in my mind, with characters that came from some hidden place within.

I have just uploaded Chapter 9: Wolf's Teeth. 
In Ch.9, Alana recovers from her sudden illness.  She finds things greatly changed between herself and the commander.  She also struggles with the deep fears she has over the Lord of Breadalbane, to whom she is to marry in a few months time.  Dark tales are told by one of Duncan's minstrels, tales of the night, tales of wolf's teeth.


Excerpt from Brundelwain, Chapter 9. Liam tells a winter's tale.

"As I said, it was up north and it was a chilling wind out. I’ll be damned, though, if a woman had not wandered up to our camp…and I swear to ye, she was stark naked.  She hadn’t seemed to care, either. Donald and I kept offerin’ to give her our cloaks but she refused, only stared at us with these wild eyes and kept askin’ for somethin’ to drink. Well, I put a kettle to the fire, tryin’ not to stare at her, with her breasts all bare and…sorry, lass…” he looked to Alana, who smiled back, “well anyway, it was a might bit distractin’ for a man.  So, I gave her the last bit o’ the spirits we had, wonderin’ what we would do with a drunken naked lass on our hands, but I swear to ye, she took one sip and she started to changin’!  I swear to ye, she turned into a wolf right in front o' my eyes."